While Beijing is tightening its grip on stablecoins, Alibaba is choosing another path: that of the deposit token backed by banks. This is not a technical detail, it is a full-scale test of the limits of the Chinese model: zero tolerance for private onshore stablecoins, but calculated openness for supervised tokens, useful for exports.
In brief
- Alibaba is considering a deposit token backed by banks to accelerate cross-border payments, without launching a classic “new crypto”.
- Beijing blocks private stablecoins on the continent, but leaves room for regulated banking tokens, compatible with its strategy around the digital yuan.
- This choice illustrates a recovery of crypto technology by States and banks, to the detriment of stablecoins and truly open and decentralized currencies.
Deposit token: Alibaba’s “bank-friendly” response to Chinese repression
Alibaba is not talking about launching “a new crypto”. The group wants to use technology resembling a stablecoin, but within a classic banking framework. The idea is simple: a deposit token is a token on blockchain which represents a direct claim on a commercial bank deposit. Legally, it is not a casino coin, it is a regulated liability of the issuing bank.
In practice, Alibaba's e-commerce cross-border mainly seeks to streamline international payments. Today, an SME that sells via Alibaba juggles currency conversions, SWIFT deadlines, hidden fees. With a deposit token, settlement could become almost instantaneous, programmable, traceable, while remaining within the banking perimeter that regulators understand and control.
This choice does not happen in a vacuum. A few days earlier, JPMorgan deployed its own deposit token for institutional clients. The message sent to the market is clear: the big banks no longer want to leave the field of tokenized payments to stablecoin issuers alone. If the banks get involved, they offer the State what it demands: innovation, but under surveillance.
Beijing closes the door to stablecoins, but leaves a window for banking tokens
For months, China has been repeating the same scenario: technical interest, political rejection. Ant Group, JD.com and other tech giants were tempted by stablecoins or tokenized products in Hong Kong. Beijing has signaled the end of the recess: frozen projects, clear signals that “made in China” stablecoins will not circulate freely on the continent.
The implicit message is brutal but readable. On the one hand, China is pushing its digital yuan (e-CNY), completely public, programmable, managed by the central bank. On the other hand, it does not want a jungle of private stablecoins that would create competing quasi-currencies, difficult to control, and potentially exploited for fraud, laundering or unauthorized capital flows.
In this context, the Alibaba version of the deposit token represents a political compromise. The token remains linked to a classic bank deposit, under existing regulations, audited, capitalized, supervised. In the eyes of the authorities, it is not a new currency, it is a new technical interface for an old concept: the bank deposit. Crypto remains outside, “banking tokenization” is tolerated as long as it does not call into question the Chinese monetary hierarchy.
This line is consistent with another movement: the pressure exerted on research, reports and seminars devoted to stablecoins, a dynamic which contrasts sharply with the United States where the Fed, under the effect of these same debates, is regularly pushed to adjust its thinking on monetary policy. By cutting off intellectual oxygen from the sector, Beijing is clearly showing that it does not want to see the emergence of a domestic stablecoin industry. But it still leaves room for maneuver for players ready to evolve within a strictly banking framework and under reinforced supervision.
Offshore, Belt and Road and crypto market: what the deposit token really changes
While China locks down onshore stablecoins, it allows offshore yuan stablecoins and Belt and Road initiatives to develop. These projects target foreign markets, businesses outside the continent, and strategic payment corridors. In other words, technology serves economic influence, but must not disrupt the domestic monetary ecosystem.
The deposit token of Alibaba is part of this logic. It is primarily aimed at cross-border payments for merchants, not speculative trading on Binance or DeFi platforms. If the project comes to fruition, it could become an invisible tool for the end user: we buy in fiat, we sell in fiat, but between the two, the value circulates in the form of bank tokens on a blockchain infrastructure.
For the crypto market, the signal is ambivalent. On the one hand, it confirms that the “crypto vs banks” narrative is outdated: the same mechanisms of tokenization, instant settlements and programmability can be captured by banks and big tech, without a volatile native token, without a mainstream stablecoin. On the other hand, it shows that governments, particularly authoritarian ones, can recover the technological building blocks of crypto while neutralizing its truly open dimension.
The strategic question then becomes clear: is Alibaba opening a breach or closing the door? In the short term, its deposit token could accelerate the global movement towards banking tokens, regulated, interoperable with existing rails, to the detriment of “pure” stablecoins issued by crypto companies. In the long term, it tests how far China is willing to go: accepting blockchain infrastructure without ever tolerating a digital currency that escapes it.
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